9.- Polish Question
(a) Why do the workmen of Europe take up this question? In the first instance, because the middle-class writers and agitators conspire to suppress it, although they patronise all sorts of nationalities, on the Continent, even Ireland. Whence this reticence? Because both, aristocrats and bourgeois, look upon the dark Asiatic power in the background as a last resource against the advancing tide of working class ascendency. That power can only be effectually put down by the restoration of Poland upon a democratic basis.
(b) In the present changed state of central Europe, and especially Germany, it is more than ever necessary to have a democratic Poland. Without it, Germany will become the outwork of the Holy Alliance,[144] with it, the co-operator with republican France. The working-class movement will continuously be inter-rupted, checked, and retarded, until this great European question be set at rest.
(c) It is especially the duty of the German working class to take the initiative in this matter, because Germany is one of the partitioners of Poland.